If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Blasphemy and the Islamic law

"Last week on Tuesday, May 13th, Human Rights Watch urged Saudi Arabia to revoke a death sentence. Sabri Bogday, a Turkish man who had a barbershop in the Saudi kingdom, had been given a death sentence in April this year. Mr Bogday was accused of blaspheming against Allah. The incident allegedly took place 14 months ago during an argument with his neighbor, an Egyptian who ran a tailor's shop.

The Egyptian filed the complaint and then disappeared. Mr Bogday admitted charges of "swearing against Allah," but was not given a chance to repent. Mr Bogday retains his Turkish citizenship, even though he has lived in the Saudi kingdom for 11 years. The Turkish government is trying to assist his attempts to have the death sentence removed.

In Afghanistan this weekend, on Sunday May 18th, an apprentice journalist appeared briefly in court. 23-year-old Parwiz Kambakhsh was sentenced to death in Mazar-i-Sharif in the north of Afghanistan on January 22nd this year for blasphemy. Mr Khambakhsh had downloaded an article from an Iranian website, and brought it into his journalism class.

This article questioned why a man is allowed under Islam to have four wives, but a woman is not allowed four husbands. Khambakhsh maintains that he only brought the article into class for the purposes of discussion. He was given only three minutes to prepare his defense when he was taken to court, and the trial took place in secret. On Sunday, an appeal court judge told him he had one week to prepare for his appeal against the death penalty. Khambakhsh told the judge: "I'm a Muslim and will never allow myself to insult my religion."

Back in March 2006, the West was shocked when a court ruled that an Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, was sentenced to death by an Afghan court. Rahman had converted to Christianity. Apostasy, according to Judge Ansarullah Mawlawizadah, was "an attack on Islam." 500 Muslim clerics demanded the death penalty for Rahman. He was smuggled out of the country and now lives in Italy.

Even the Afghanistan Senate approved the death sentence against 23-year-year old Parwiz Kambakhsh. The trainee journalist's plight may be politically motivated - his brother Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi has written on the atrocities committed by a former leader in the Northern Alliance. This man is Haji Mohammed Mohaqeq. It appears that the harshness of Parwiz's sentence may have been intended to silence his brother's reports. Mohaqeq is head of Afghanistan's Religious and Cultural Affairs Commission, and is based in Mazar-i-Sharif.

In Pakistan, harsh laws against blasphemy were introduced by the Islamist military dictator General Zia ul-Haq, who ruled the country from July 1977 until his death in a plane crash in August 1988. Anyone who is officially accused of any of Pakistan's blasphemy laws is automatically taken into custody. These laws will be discussed in more depth later, but in practice they are frequently used to discriminate against non-Muslims.

People accused of blasphemy in Pakistan often become the victims of lynch-mobs. Last month, on April 8th a young Hindu was lynched to death by his co-workers after being accused of blaspheming against Mohammed, founder of Islam.

23-year-old Jagdeesh Kumar worked at a garment factory in Karachi, a port city in Sindh province. He was beaten to death while a contingent of police stood by and did nothing. It took days for a police report to be filed on the case, but arrests did not happen until weeks later. According to my friend, Pakistani Christian journalist Qaiser Felix, when the three workers who killed Jagdesh were arrested, they were "charged not with murder but with 'failure to inform the police that blasphemy was underway.'" Qaiser wrote that Jagdeesh was the first Hindu to die as a result of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

On Friday last week, Compass Direct reported on the case of a Pakistani Christian, Dr. Robin Sardar. This man, a father of six, lives in Punjab Province, along with most of Pakistan's small number of Christians. Dr. Sardar appears to have been falsely accused of blasphemy by a street vendor. The doctor argued with the vendor. The next day (May 5th), after the vendor had been reporting that Dr. Sardar had earlier blasphemed against Mohammed, a mob of Muslims arrived at his home, calling for his death. Police arrested Dr Sardar. His house now carries a sign outside it, bearing the words: "This is the house of a blasphemer."

According to Dr. Sardar's nephew, he had been friends with his accuser for years before the blasphemy accusation was made. A police report was filed. Since 1990, an amendment to the law means that anyone found guilty of blaspheming against Mohammed receives a mandatory death sentence. So far, no one has been executed for blasphemy in Pakistan, although at least 22 individuals have been lynched to death after being accused of the crime.

One activist based in Islamabad has said: "Not a single murderer who killed anyone for blasphemy has been punished for murder. In fact, such murderers get hero's treatment in police stations. And those police officials who openly honour such murderers have never been tried for their illegal and reprehensible action."

In Bangladesh this month, a Christian pastor based in Mymensingh district was "punished" by Muslim villagers for being open about his faith and ignoring the death threats that Muslims made against him. On May 2 the 13-year-old daughter of Pastor Motilal Das was gang-raped by five Muslim villagers.

These are just a few recent cases. What do such acts of brutality and laws that support intolerance say about these societies? Why is Islam the only faith to continue to condone the killing of apostates and blasphemers?"

The above excerpt is Part one of an extensive analysis By Adrian Morgan. To read the complete artice click here..

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"The strongest proof of real, extremely despotic power in Islam is the fact that it has been able to invalidate, in such large measure, the entire history (customs, religion, previous way of looking at things, earlier imagination) of the peoples converted to it. It accomplished this only by instilling into them a new religious arrogance which was stronger than everything and induced them to be ashamed of their past."

"Is the fate of gradually becoming an Arab nation the Maldive Islanders' only option?This is the Maldivian dilemma since they made the decision to accept the Arabs as their undisputed cultural masters and began to sever their links with their own past.Nowadays Maldivians are culturally restless people who can never be at ease.The intense indoctrination of the 1980s and 90s, when Islamization was imposed on the islands at a much higher gear than at any time in the nation's history, has made Maldivians feel uncozy in their own country.The changes brought about have been of such magnitude and in such a short time, that there is now a whole young generation of Divehi people who, having not known how things were previously, take for granted that their home nation has always been so orthodox and impersonal."

- Xavier Romero-Frias in THE MALDIVE ISLANDERS, A Study of the Popular Culture of an Ancient Ocean Kingdom

"The Islamic conquerors took everything from the newly conquered: money, language, culture, traditions, wives, children, values. Everything. The nature of Islam is that it replaces cultures wherever it gets a foothold."

150 Maldivian Adulteresses To Be Flogged

Stop the Islamic religious duty of Fuc-Kendun in Maldives!

When a husband pronounced his wife divorce three times “thrice divorced” and wants to remarry her, he cannot do it lawfully until he pays another man “Al Mohalil”(which means the legalizer) who marries this thrice divorced woman and (had sexual intercourse or consummating the marriage with her) and then dismisses her so that she may lawfully marry her former husband.

In Quran sura al-Baqara 2:230 says,”…So if a husband divorced his wife he cannot after that remarry her until after she has married another husband, and he has divorced her, in that case there is no blame on either of them if they reunite…”

Abu Dawud (2142) - "The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife."

ISLAMIC FUK-KENDUN IS A MORAL AND PHYSICAL RAPE.

In Islam a husband can reunite with his wife after divorcing her under this condition: When a woman is divorced irrevocably, she can not return to her husband until she marries (including having sexual intercourse) with another man. "Narrated Aisha: The wife of Rifaa Al-Qurazi came to Allah's Apostle and said, 'O Allah's Apostle, Rifaa divorced me irrevocably. After him I married Abdur-Rahman bin Az-Zubair Al-Qurazi who proved to be impotent.' Allah's Apostle said to her, 'Perhaps you want to return to Rifaa? Nay (You cannot return to Rifaa ) until you and Abdur-Rahman (the impotent man) engage in sexual intercourse! '" Vol. 7:186

The making of the ancient Dhivehi island people into semi-Arab Muslims

How Dhivehi minds are groomed to become lifelong zombies that they can't apply minimum logic and reason to discover numerous obvious errors and contradictions in the Quran and Hadith and that they consider the most horrendous, unethical and barbarous actions of Muhammad as acts of great morality and humanity...

Did you know ?

Until about 100 years ago in Divehi we didn't say "salaan kurun"?We said Namaskaarakurun or Swasti(Swasti = Peace)

men & women are equal in Islam?

Women cannot touch the Koran during certain days because they are unclean

Dhivehistanis want to conquer the world for Allah

"Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies..." -- Koran 8:60

Muslim Arab missionaries and Dhivehi collaborateurs

Muslims cite Islamic taboos and Koranic injections as more important than freedom of thinking. Freedom of expression is and always has been subject to Islamic taboos. Islamic taboos exist to keep Muslims from thinking independently and these taboos are enforced by Mullahs and Islamic rulers. Those who oppose are silenced or beheaded. Public expression against Mohammed or Allah will be labeled as apostate and those dissenters will be severely punished. Strict censorship is imposed on TV, film, magazines and newspapers by religious bodies and by the government.

"If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose". -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect, and author (1743-1826)

“If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed”. - Umar the Caliph of Islam after the conquest of Alexandria in 641, ordered the great library to be destroyed.

The books were then used to heat the furnaces of the numerous bath-houses of the city.

Maldives Minister of Islamic Affairs says

"Shari’ah law ultimately requires the killing of those who leave Islam."

All smiles after being found guilty of massacring 52 Hindus in a 2003 bombing, Hanif Anees is also quite dedicated to his religion. (Care to guess which one?)

Maldives Constitution: No Citizenship for non-Muslims

Article 9, Section D : “a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives.”

By denying citizenship to some people on the basis of their religion, the country is violating religious minorities’ freedom of worship.

“This denial of citizenship to non-Muslims is an extraordinarily harsh measure which places the Maldives among the worst countries in the world in regards to the legal foundation for freedom of religion and belief,”

What does the Koran say about Jihad?

In Islam's 3 Holy Books: 97% references to jihad relate to holy war; while only 3% relate to inner struggle

"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world." -- Sir Winston Churchill - circa 1899